marysgardens

These sketches are notes prepared for planning a future painting.  In the process, I  play with brush marks and edges on cardboard, first in black and white and then adding some more abstract color perspectives. 

I am thinking about a simple painting of a person and a bird on an ocean beach, and am wondering what direction to take. 

Where should the person and the bird be positioned?  Should their lines be hard edged and realistic or might these objects be better depicted in a more  abstract and reflective way?  Should they stand out and burst with color or be more tonal in nature, positioning themselves smoothly between water, sky and beach?  When and where should the sky, and the water erupt into being?  How does light run through this?

These sketches on cardboard are for me, a form of meditation.

They are a kind of warm up where I roam about the gessoed cardboard with ink, some acrylic and finally oils, while playing with shapes and soft edges, varying the texture to see what affect it has on the person and the bird.

How important is this bird?

What about reflections, and of what?

Playing with water reflections and edges.

Let’s try mixing it up a little, who has the sharp edges and who is soft and fuzzy?

A person and bird on an ocean beach, with greater emphasis on the bird.

How complex should the textures be when sketching the bird and person? How about varying brush strokes and types of edges and how these variations create differential emphases on the sky, beach and ocean? How much color should I add?

There are five parts to this simple painting: bird, person, waves, beach, sky, However, this bird seems to be taking over.

Shifting to color when thinking about the horizon and light, I paint some potential perspectives on the background.

How to depict with horizontal lines, those beautiful shifts in color, the blended statuses that occur, between sky and the imagined ocean horizon; repeated when ocean waves become still waters and beach sand?

And how would it look if it all turned out in blues?

These are early thoughts about edges and brushwork that I might use while preparing a future oil painting of a person and a bird, positioned on the soft and often merged horizontal lines between water, beach and sky.

Time will tell how this all turns out.

These sketches were completed during the period of time that I have been taking the art class called Painting on the Edge taught by Michael Orwick, offered through the Oregon Society of Artists.